Fast songs, slow songs and all sorts of other songs that have been making us keep hitting play this week…
Mock Media II is the debut LP from new Canadian supergroup Mock Media, featuring members of Crack Cloud and Pottery. There are some mellow jangles and there are some punked up riffs too, but it’s the way it flows between them that is the real hook. Lo-fi but still full of big bright production and great drive. Loads going on and plenty to check out on repeat listens; we’re pretty taken with this one.
+ We’re very proud to have this one available as an exclusive Dinked Edition.
Produced by long-time musical collaborator Mica Levi, Tirzah’s third LP - Trip9love…??? - is a tender and bruised experimental set with amazing intimacy. Her voice is graceful and full of understated confidence. Sonically there are some really lush reverbs to create space, and the way the guitars crackle into a rain-like fuzz is superbly evocative. Record of the Week.
+ Available on limited Gold colour vinyl.
Chaos Magic is a shimmering and celestial pop excursion from the now Athens-based Finnish musician Jaakko Eino Kalevi. Exotic electro-pop moods with jazz flashes and positively sumptuous analogue hues. Smartly avoiding sentimentalism, it sounds old yet vibrant; like imaginative outsider synth pop from sometime and somewhere in the last 40 odd years.
The National return this week with Laugh Track, the surprise companion to The National's April release First Two Pages of Frankenstein. There is a very live vibe to it and the guests (Bon Iver, Rosanne Cash and Phoebe Bridgers) help take it somewhere new. The album closer Smoke Detector is pretty epic stuff.
+ Available on double Pink colour vinyl.
Emeli Sandé releases the all-new How Were We to Know LP this week and her voice - naturally - sounds amazing. We have signed copies.
Speedy Wunderground release an all new EP this week called SXSW EP. Featuring the new and bubbling talents Enumclaw, Revival Season and alexalone who all played at the labels SXSW showcase. The 12” vinyl version also contains a fourth vinyl-only bonus track from Savage Gary!
Kurt Vile releases a super-breezy new EP called Back to Moon Beach via Fiction. It’s taken from a few sessions of the last while, but it all sits together great, with Kurt in gloriously laconic form.
+ Available on limited Coke Bottle colour vinyl.
Also this week; Duo Smoke Fairies return with the dark and alluring Carried In Sound. Salvage Enterprise is the first album in yonks from Dallas choral rock band The Polyphonic Spree. It certainly has some euphoria. Matt Berry releases a really lush collaboration called Simplicity with the esteemed Library Music label KPM. Julian Koster (Neutral Milk Hotel) releases Quartet Plus Two under the name Orbiting Human Circus via Merge Records. We have a limited Opaque Natural and Pink Swirl vinyl pressing. Flume returns with a double release on Transgressive, with Things Don't Always Go The Way You Plan and Arrived Anxious, Left Bored which both contain unheard music from the last decade.
In print this week, World Within A Song is a mix of memories, music, and inspiration from Wilco frontman and New York Times bestselling author Jeff Tweedy. Cause he’s a good guy, JT signed some bookplates for us.
Lastly this week, culled from half a decade of home four-tracking, Remote Echoes is a hissy, crumbly, and ungrounded expression of Clay Parton and Canaan Amber’s ongoing Duster project. It is so full of smokey light, whispers and hums that are covered in fingerprints and lo-fi analogue magic. We love this band and this really has a special mood to it.
+ Available on a very limited Indie exclusive "Clear w/ Sea Blue & Ruby Splatter" colour vinyl pressing.
Reissues are really hitting us hard this week too, with the sublime Myriam Gendron, plenty of Acetone, Bill Evans Trio’s Sunday At The Village Vanguard, Scritti Politti and absolutely bangers from The Rapture amongst plenty else. More of that soon.
- Drift
